Song of the Stars

Some love the temper of well crowded
streets
In dark smoky taverns they brag of their feats
Some love the bustle of stalls and bazaars,
But mine are the stars, I've always loved the
stars...

Tara nole, e-leni, celeblin
dae
Rill quivien, nimirie din lome.

The blaze of the cities despoils the
night
Shaming the sky with the stain of their light
But my mother's people love twilight's reply
Thousands of stars, caught in a brilliant sky.

And I've seen the ship rising, a phoenix
in flight
To the stars I knew only as sharp points of light.
And the snarl of power can't muffle the sound
The songs of the stars, calling to those on the
ground.

And my heritage calls me away from my
home
To see wonders unspoke-of in legend or tome
To fly in the lady's predestined design
To look to the stars, to know that the stars are
mine.

It would dazzle my mother to know where
I've run
There are billions of worlds and each star is a sun.
But I think it would please her to see the ship rise,
To know that the stars have dazzled her daughter's
eyes.

This song was written about 1981 for my first Science Fiction
Convention (an OryCon, if I remember right). I was under the
impression that I was supposed to make up a character to "come as,"
so I did; this song was part of her story. The chorus is a lullaby
her mother used to sing her; she doesn't understand the words, but
they're something about waking up to see the stars overhead, as the
first of her line woke for the first time to see the glory of the
midnight sky.

In actual point of fact I pieced the chorus together from the
glossary in the back of The Silmarillion, and I think the story that
the newly-created elves first woke under the stars is also from that
source.